"RYE" 2007 Obituary

RYERSON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-07-06 published
She was a co-founder and defender of Ontario's McMichael gallery
With her husband, she was always ready to do battle with anything
that threatened the collection. As the more knowledgeable, she
was also responsible securing significant donations
By Val ROSS,
Page S9
Toronto -- About 35,000 schoolchildren a year troop through the
McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario Until
recently, a white-haired woman with a taste for artistic scarves
would often greet them. Sometimes, she'd stoop down to pick up
after them -- whisking away stray candy wrappers as scrupulously
as if the gallery were her own house.
Once, it was. Signe
McMICHAEL was one half of the couple who
created the collection of works by Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, David
Milne and the Group of Seven, and Inuit and Woodland art and
sculpture. She and her husband, Robert, donated 200 paintings
to the public in 1965, along with the house that contained them
known as Tapawingo (Place of Joy) -- and the forest in which
it sits, about 40 kilometres northwest of Toronto.
"The sense of home that pervades the place today is due to her,"
said Tom SMART, director of the McMichael. "That kind of feel
is her legacy."
"Without this remarkable couple, there would be no gallery,"
wrote author Pierre Berton, a lifelong friend and defender of
the McMichaels, in a letter to The Globe and Mail in 1981. "[They]
gave the best years of their lives to the fulfilment of that
dream. And when the dream was complete, they turned it over to
the people of Ontario -- everything -- the astonishing collection
of paintings, the unique log building in which they were housed,
and the setting itself -- perhaps the most valuable piece of
rural real estate in the province."
Mr. Berton, the champion, invoked the ghost of Canada's first
prime minister and aimed his lance directly at Queen's Park,
which had decided to close the gallery and the estate (and with
it the McMichael's home), for two years.
"In the light of the ludicrous and contradictory statements being
made on behalf of the gallery's board and the Government, it
is pertinent to question the real motives of the bureaucrats,"
Mr. Berton wrote. "For none of the arguments has been convincing.
As Sir John A. Macdonald once said, in a different context, 'It
won't catch the blindest.' The suspicion lingers that the civil
servants are trying to get rid of the McMichaels. The public,
surely, will not stand for this shabby treatment. Every Canadian
who has spent an afternoon at this unique and splendid gallery
owes a debt to Robert and Signe
McMICHAEL."
The McMICHAELs were always ready to skirmish with anyone they
sensed who wanted to move the collection or the institution away
from its founders' vision, with Robert doing the talking, and
Signe frowning and nodding vigorously in the background.
Her family, the Sorensons, immigrated to Canada from Denmark
in 1927. They arrived when Signe was 6, settling in the Peace
River district of Alberta. Her mother, Anna Tera, died shortly
after, leaving Soren
SORENSON to bring up his three daughters,
Astrid, Signe, and Helen, in the approaching Depression. Yet
Signe always spoke of a happy childhood, with a pony, a dog cart
and explorations on cross-country skis.
A good scholar with a prodigious memory, she graduated from Alberta
College in the opening days of the Second World War and was hired
into the communications branch of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
With demobilization, she took jobs in commercial radio in Edmonton,
Vancouver -- and then Toronto, where she met a tall, confident
salesman who told her he was building a business that offered
bridal photography services.
"When I first met her, Signe
SORENSON was employed as a continuity
writer at [Toronto's] radio station CKEY," Robert
McMICHAEL
wrote in his autobiography, One Man's Obsession. "Impressed with
the care and attention she gave to writing and scheduling the
brief, inexpensive bridal commercials I purchased, I found that
I was also personally attracted to her. In spite of the small
salary I could offer, I was able to lure her to work at my photographic
studio."
This passage is one of the longest Mr.
McMICHAEL wrote about
the woman who would become his loyal wife for the next 54 years.
"The title of his book tells it all," said Geoffrey
ZIMMERMAN,
who was Ms.
McMICHAEL's legal representative on the McMichael
gallery board. "But the thing that always struck me was what
a complementary partnership it was. Bob was full of bravado,
he could bully or charm; Signe was quiet but methodical."
"I always felt he kept her under a basket," said Dennis
REID,
senior curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
"And I always liked her sweet disposition and gentle heart."
The pair married in 1949. Two years later, Robert went to see
some bush land outside Toronto on the Humber River (and here
his prose becomes genuinely romantic): "My pulse quickened and
I knew I was falling in love at first sight; an affair that would
last a lifetime. That evening, as I tried to describe the forests
and hills above the yawning valley with its twisted river… Signe
smiled at me and, I could see, was making allowances for gross
exaggeration."
But she fell in love, too, and they bought six hectares. As Robert's
photography business morphed into packaging products targeted
at the newlywed market, he travelled the continent, leaving Ms.
McMICHAEL
to handle the construction of their new house. Soon, they were
wealthy enough to fill it with Canadian landscape art.
By the late 1950s, Tapawingo had become famous for paintings
and parties, with neighbours such as the Bertons, and surviving
members of the Group of Seven, the famed association of landscape
artists that included Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y.
Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and
Frederick Varley. Tom Thomson was Friends with most of the members
but died before the group was formed. Later, the group expanded
to include L.L. FitzGerald, Edwin Holgate and A.J. Casson.
As it happens, Jackson and Varley lived out some of their final
years at Tapawingo, and some members of the group are buried
on the property.
In 1965, the McMichaels convinced the provincial government to
take over Tapawingo's operating costs and create a public gallery.
In return, they were given the unusual right to live on-site,
all expenses paid, and to occupy two of the five positions on
the gallery's board. In 1968, after more McMichael lobbying,
the gallery won Crown status, which meant that gifts could be
written off against donors' income -- a precedent for all art
patrons in Canada.
One who gave to the McMichael was Colonel Sam
McLAUGHLIN, president
of General Motors of Canada. "I doubt that but for Signe's Friendship
with Isabel
McLAUGHLIN that the colonel would have given his
collection," Mr.
ZIMMERMAN said.
By 1980, the gallery had become a conservationist's nightmare.
The couple was ousted so the building could be fireproofed, repaired
and expanded. In 1981, Ontario taxpayers paid $298,544 to buy
them a big new house in nearby Belfountain, but it wasn't the
same. They were unhappy to be away from home. "We'd still rather
have Tapawingo," Mr. McMichael said.
Another festering issue was the gallery's mandate. According
to the original deal, it was to collect works by artists "who
have made contributions to the development of Canadian art."
But what is "Canadian art"? In 1996, after curators installed
a modernistic steel-and-concrete sculpture by John McEwen on
the long entrance drive where the couple had once planted saplings
by hand, the landscape-loving McMichaels sued Ontario for breach
of contract. In June, 2000, they won. Ontario passed legislation
that restored their board positions and reaffirmed that the gallery's
mandate lay predominantly in realistic imagery.
This was the art loved by Ms.
McMICHAEL, in particular. John
RYERSON, now director of the Varley Gallery in Markham, Ontario,
chatted with her about the collection in the 16 years he worked
at the McMichael. "She was the more knowledgeable," he recalled,
"though profoundly overshadowed by Bob."
Mr. McMICHAEL died in 2003. "He was the love of her life," Mr.
ZIMMERMAN
said. "After, she was preoccupied with her memories."
But for as long as she could, he said, despite knee surgery,
she would go to the gallery to greet the schoolchildren.
SigneKirstenSorensonMcMICHAEL was born February 10, 1921,
in Sandersig, Denmark. She died of heart disease in Toronto on
Wednesday evening. She was 86. She is survived by her older sister,
Astrid WRIGHT.
She will be buried at Tapawingo beside her husband,
amid the graves of the Group of Seven. The graveyard was created
by the Province of Ontario and is restricted to members of the
Group of Seven, their wives and the founders. The graves are
laid out in a circle, with rocks from the Canadian Shield as
headstones. Members of the group not interred there are Franklin
Carmichael, Edwin Holgate, L.L. FitzGerald and J.E. MacDonald.
The funeral will be held at the gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario,
at 11 a.m. on Monday.